Upwards Analgesia
by safa'at keruth
Summary: Dystopian-ish AU. In which meetings in a coffee shop prove surprisingly conductive to treating headaches and piecing together the truth. The past is overrated, anyway. Wallshipping Rishid/Shizuka, for contest.


A Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanfiction Contest Entry  
>Season 8.5, Tier 4 – <strong>Wallshipping (Rishid x Shizuka Kawai)<br>**Disclaimer: I don't own YGO.  
><em>Summary:<em> _Vaguely dystopian AU. In which meetings in a coffee shop prove surprisingly conductive to treating headaches and piecing together the truth. The past is overrated, anyway._

WARNINGS: Mentions of character death.

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><p>.<p>

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**Upwards Analgesia**

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><p><em>Let me tell you a story.<em>

_It's a story about a world in which there's war. And in the midst of the war, there's this girl—a girl who has my name, but she isn't me. Not really. Not at all._

_So, anyway, this girl is living in the middle of the war. Right in the battle zone, with the crumbled remains of her home falling around her with passing second, and maybe a family or friends lost to the ranks of the enemy, or the ranks of the allies. It doesn't really matter to her now._

_Let's say she's forgotten what she had before—an unconscious action of self-preservation, to make it easier for her to adapt. Adaptation is key here, you see, because all she cares about is surviving, living to see the next sunset or sunrise or drip of water._

_Let's say that she has a lot of time on her hands, so she just sits around all day and stares at whatever's closest. Let's say that during this time, she wonders who she was before. What she was before._

_Let's say that she was thinking about that when the war ended and her home was washed to splintered, damp bits by the rain. Let's say she thought about that when they found her._

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The interior of the shop smelled of baking and coffee, warm in contrast to the freezing rain of outside and its windows obscured by condensation. Shizuka rested her weight on one leg as she lingered behind the empty counter and fingered the dismal collection of coins she had in her palm, hours too late for the morning rush.

One 0.5. Two 0.25s. A tiny stack of tarnished 0.01s, and one forlorn 0.001 beneath it all. Not nearly enough to add up to the 1.35 that a single coffee cost.

She blew out a breath, staring up at the menu posted behind the counter and wondering if it would be better to get something as insubstantial as a pack of candies instead of waiting for another day's pay so she could afford her drink.

Her eyes traced longingly over the selection at the very bottom of the menu, a full-sized cup of tea—tea, one of those exotic foreign drinks! It was a wonder the shop offered it at all—that was selling for an entire 30.98. She could recall distinctly the last time she'd so much as seen tea: a fleeting moment as she counted her change in another coffee shop and watched with wide eyes as a businessman walked past her with an open cup of it.

It had been a thick, dark green, completely unlike the plain brown coffee she was used to. She'd heard that some shops had different varieties of it, red and white and some the same color of coffee.

"Miss?" The one cashier on duty, a tired-looking girl only a few years older than Shizuka, was looking at her with weary blue eyes. "Are you going to buy something?"

"No," Shizuka began to say, with a genuinely regretful smile on her lips; her stomach twisted hollowly, but she ignored the sensation and was about to turn around and leave when a man in a dark jacket brushed past her.

"I'll pay for what she's getting."

Shizuka blinked at him in confusion, and her inquisitive gaze met with the deep purple fabric of the man's cloak—was that waterproof, to have droplets of water clinging determinedly to its sides but looking dry otherwise? It was raining quite heavily outside, after all, but that had been such a constant feature of the city that she'd long grown used to the patter.

The man was speaking his order to the mildly bemused cashier—Shizuka could see the dark circles beneath the girl's eyes, the exhausted fall of their lids—and then she was running up to the counter, grabbing the man's arm as he was beginning to pay.

"Don't," she said, breathless. "I'll just have a hot chocolate—small, please."

As the girl nodded and typed in her order on a separate machine, disappearing into the back room to prepare their drinks, Shizuka leaned her elbows onto the plastic-masquerading-as-stone counter and put her head into her hands.

Her temples were throbbing, sending static beats of pain across her forehead and eyes; she rubbed at them absently, attempting to quell the ringing in her ears and the images flashing through her mind in quick succession and trying to resist the urge to throw up. _No charity_, the faces in her head were whispering, blond hair and brown hair and black hair and oh God she couldn't see anything but the bursts of light—

"Miss?"

Shizuka jerked her head up from her arms, biting her lip to dispel the sensation of vertigo as she shoved the pile of coins in her hand toward the girl and took her change with trembling fingers. The hot chocolate she received was steaming, uncovered because nobody except the rich could actually afford plastic lids these days, and she felt her empty stomach twist at the smell.

She thanked the cashier girl weakly and walked to a booth in the corner of the coffee shop, thumping her drink down—she'd probably spilled something, but she really didn't care at this point—and shoving it as far away from her as possible. The cool, cracked plastic covering of the seat was soothing as she leaned against it, resting her elbows against the table and propping her head up on it. She buried her nose in the worn fabric of her sleeve, willing herself to smell the dampness of the cloth rather than the drink she'd been looking forward to a few minutes ago.

Deep breaths, she told herself. This had happened before. _Deep breaths, think about something pleasant, like... like... um, the rain..._

The stubborn part of her mind wanted to insist that rain wasn't pleasant, but Shizuka ignored it and concentrated on the steady pattering outside the glass windows. As the throb in her head began to lessen and she could sneak covert glances at the hot chocolate without feeling nauseous, she thought that she had never been so glad for the weather.

"Are you alright?"

Shizuka jerked to a sitting position, relieved when she felt only somewhat lightheaded after the abrupt action. "Yeah," she said, offering the man who'd tried to pay for her a smile. "Don't worry, these headaches happen to me a lot; they're not very serious and end pretty quickly." She was lying somewhat—occasionally, she couldn't sleep for days afterward and had to resort to prowling the dripping streets during the night, exhaustion making her movements sluggish until she finally collapsed into a corner somewhere—but she figured the man didn't need to know.

"Migraines?" he guessed, stirring his drink.

She shrugged, eyeing her cup in an attempt to analyze her degree of recovery and deciding to leave it there for another minute at least, no matter if it became cold. "I suppose so. Thank you," she added, remembering what he'd done, "for offering to pay for my drink. It was very kind." Once the words left her lips, she flushed and looked down, realizing that she'd just commented on his actions like she would some present from an overenthusiastic toddler.

"I would have done it, had you accepted," the man said quietly, lifting the cup to his lips and sipping at it with seemingly little regard for its temperature. Shizuka belated realized that it was not a warm drink but instead iced coffee, the supposed 'liquid' half composed of hollow ice cubes. "Acts of kindness are rare now. I do my best to spread them."

"Thank you," Shizuka repeated, deigning it safe to pull her hot chocolate toward her and sniff it experimentally. The steam had more or less disappeared by now, but the side of the thin paper cup was still warm. "Why are you drinking something so cold, when it's nearly winter outside?" she asked curiously, nodding toward his iced coffee.

The man smiled a little. Shizuka thought it looked sad. "It's something of a tradition."

Shizuka winced as her head throbbed again, letting go of the hot chocolate to rub at it. "It's a large cup too," she managed to gasp when the pain was over, the words forced from her without thought as another series of images flickered briefly in her mind. It was more wonder at how he could afford it than a comment on drinking large quantities of near-frozen beverages on cold days, but she hoped the man didn't realize that.

"Tradition," the man repeated, and she glanced up to realize that he watching her with some concern. "Are you sure—"

"Yes," she said, blinking to clear her vision. The hot chocolate was looking marginally less appealing now; she pushed it off to the side once more and took a deep breath through her mouth, just in case. "I'm fine, really."

The man nodded, looking dubious as to the validity of her response, and the ice cubes clinked in the thin plastic cup he was holding as he tipped it back to swallow them all. Clean, drinkable water was still precious, after all, even when the rain poured down in gallons and gallons each day and night. "If you ever need a coffee again," he said unexpectedly as he stood, empty cup in one hand, and the door swung closed behind him before he could finish his sentence.

Shizuka blinked at the spot across the booth from her that he'd occupied previously, uncertain of what he'd meant until she shifted a little and caught sight of the tiny paper card lying on his seat.

She leaned over to pick it up and ran her fingers over the edge as she read the carefully printed words: _The Masala Hut [moving stand]. Open 10:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. 23 Domino Plaza_.

And on the back, written in faded, blunt pencil, another word: _Nighttime._

The hot chocolate was cold as it met her lips, but Shizuka smiled anyway.

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The smile had faded by the time she reached the rickety old apartment building that served as her home and made her way up the eleven flights of stairs to reach the set of rooms that she lived in, the empty cup from the coffee shop clutched in her hand.

She barely managed to lock the door behind her and fasten all three bolts before she collapsed on top of her bed, curling into a ball and clutching at her head and squeezing her eyes shut. The cup of hot chocolate had rolled onto the floor and might have spread sticky drops over the wooden boards by now, but Shizuka didn't care. She would clean up later.

"Ouch," she moaned softly, thinking with some hysterical humor that _oh, well, won't be able to eat any lunch today_ before her thoughts tumbled into blackness.

_brother—stop the rain, stop it stop it—gunpowder cracking, houses crumbling—big brother? big brother, what—no, I don't understand, why—fireworks flashing, shots ringing over the sound of thunder—smoke blooming, rain pouring, houses floating—"what a terrible place to wage war, all wet where our explosives won't ignite"—floorboard creaking, water dripping—I don't want to be alone—I don't I don't I don't—big brother help me—_

She drifted.

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_Okay, so now we have this girl, this girl who's not me, sitting in the windowless room with the pale walls and arms limp at her sides. She's telling the men that no, she doesn't remember anything, that really, she's not lying, and the men don't believe her._

_She's confused and scared and hungry. She wants to go home, even though she doesn't remember what home is._

_So the girl tries to escape. Can you picture it? Her in thin papery prison garments and the walls of the building all shining tiles and pale paint as she creeps down the halls. Can you see her, there among the rest of the building's inhabitants, footsteps echoing in the silence? Can you imagine it?_

_The girl doesn't succeed, of course. There are guards everywhere, and they don't let her leave. And in between—oh, let's say attempts number fifty-two and fifty-three—the men start talking to her again. Trying to become friends with her._

_She doesn't trust them, and she doesn't answer._

_Let's say that when they realize she's not going to respond, they take her out of her windowless room and put her in another one, where she sleeps for a long, long time._

_She wakes up in between, but she doesn't remember any of that. The men are making it so that she won't remember anything._

_And after she wakes up, she's lying in the street while it rains on top of her and there's a grouchy, balding man in a black raincoat who offers her an apartment and an explanation._

_Civil service, he calls it. Let's say the girl doesn't understand what he means._

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Shizuka was sitting in the coffee shop, in the same booth she'd occupied the previous day, when the man arrived with what looked like a cupful of mashed ice and sat across from her.

She looked up at the intrusion, about to open the packet of crackers in her hand, and felt herself automatically give him a tired smile when she recognized him.

"Are you quite sure you're okay?" he asked quietly, still wearing the same purple raincoat garment as before. He made no mention of the card he'd 'forgotten' on the bench, and Shizuka was beginning to believe that the action had been an accident and not a purposeful one. "You look... worn out."

"I couldn't sleep well last night," Shizuka said, which was somewhat true; the headaches had plagued her even in unconsciousness, and she'd woken up feeling no more well rested than if she'd spent the entire time taking energy pills. "It's nothing. I'll be fine in a few days."

"Does this happen often?" the man said, stirring the mashed ice and water in his cup contemplatively. Shizuka wondered if he was even going to drink it, being as the street outside was getting very near to frozen over with leftover rain and her breath had puffed out in white clouds as she'd walked to the shop.

"Every few weeks," she said, taking out one of the crackers and sighing in relief when she realized they were the cheap ones—spotted with sesame seeds in order to look more nutritious—which she knew her stomach could handle after even the worst of nights. "They've been getting a little more frequent for the past two months, though. I guess it's a stage or something."

"You should see a doctor," he man advised, sipping at his condensation-coated drink. The ice cubes clinked against each other as he set the cup back down onto the table.

Shizuka flinched at his words, the cracker she'd been trying to nibble at slowly to prolong the meal cracking into two pieces and a lot of crumbs beneath her teeth. "I could never afford it," she said, trying to smile her shock off. "Besides, it's not very serious, really. A good night's sleep is all I need."

"Is there any medication you can take for it?" the man said. "I have many old bottles at my home, and one pill less is insignificant."

"Old bottles?" Shizuka said in open fascination, the packet of crackers forgotten as she leaned forward in fascination. "From before the war?"

"Yes," the man said, and though his tone didn't change, Shizuka had the feeling that she probably shouldn't pursue the subject.

Nevertheless, she found herself asking one last question: "Can I see them some time?"

The man observed her quietly, his beverage more than half-finished; she wondered when he'd managed to drink so much without her noticing. "You can come to my home after we're both done here and I'll show you," he offered. "It would be better for you to take any medicines you need tonight rather than tomorrow afternoon, anyway."

"Okay," Shizuka said, feeling ridiculously giddy as she absently chewed at another cracker and rolled the tiny sesame seeds on her tongue. The period of time before the war had never been of too much interest to her; she'd always been too preoccupied with the present to bother with the past. She didn't know why she was so excited to see what were practically antiques.

Then again, antiques of that kind were banned in the city, written off as useless reminders of a lesser time. The time before the war was not mentioned at all. Shizuka didn't remember any of it—there weren't many people alive who recalled it; most had died during the fighting—and she'd only been a small child then. Not old enough to regret anything.

The plastic crinkled beneath her fingers as she inadvertently clutched it tighter, the final bits of the second cracker dissolving in her mouth. The sesame seeds lingered on her tongue.

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The rain sloshed against her sneakers as Shizuka walked through it carelessly, only rolling up the legs of her jeans to make sure they weren't unduly splashed. By now, she was used to returning to her apartment barefoot, drying shoes clutched in one hand. She had no hood like the man did, and her hair was sopping wet and sticking to the back of her shirt and the sides of her face by the time the man brought her to his building.

His apartment turned out to be surprisingly comfortable and neat, if obviously intended for only one inhabitant. Everything was organized and clean, despite the thin wear of the carpet—Shizuka was impressed by that, nevertheless; he actually had a carpet!—and the ridges on the top of the kitchen table as they sat at it and he waited for her to finish her approximation of a meal.

"You have a working refrigerator," Shizuka marveled, glancing at the small white appliance in the corner of the room. "I just use mine as an extra storage place."

The man nodded; Shizuka thought his eyes—a sort of pale green-gray color, she'd never noticed that before—were wary now, watching hers carefully. "I've been lucky, some would say."

Shizuka bit into another cracker, letting the piece sit in her mouth and dissolve. She knew that the amount of income a person received per day depended on the government's level of esteem for them; paying jobs helped, yes, but she, like most, made do with the allowance she collected from the bank every morning. "So," she said, attempting to keep her voice as light as possible, "where are these old medicines?"

The man stood silently, and she rose to follow him. He pushed open the door to what she presumed to be his bedroom, walking past the mattress on the floor and opening the wooden cabinet that stuck out at an odd angle from the wall. Its hinges creaked when it swung, jamming at a ninety-degree angle.

"Here," he said needlessly, and stepped back for Shizuka to gape at the rows and rows of bottles.

The packet of crackers lay forgotten on the dresser as she ran her hands over the contents of the cabinet—_Tylenol_, read one, white letters inlaid upon red. Another was a tall orange-white bottle with a small image of citrus fruits on the label; another was made of dark brown glass, its contents sloshing around slowly when she picked it up.

A hand reached past her, grabbing an unmarked white container from the lower shelf. "These are the ones you want," the man said, opening the bottle to shake some pills out. They left with a faint dusting of powder that coated his palm in a chalky film. "For headaches."

"How come you have all these?" Shizuka said, wonder in her voice as she fingered a paper carton colored with dark blue ink. "Did everyone have this many before the war?"

The man put the pills back into the bottle and screwed it closed once more. "I told you, my family was luckier than most others."

Shizuka leaned back, closing the cabinet door and picking up her packet of crackers once more as she made her way around the rest of the room. She came to the nightstand, which was completely bare except for the pale cardboard-and-wood backing of a picture frame that had been pushed down onto the table.

In a moment of daring she hadn't expected, Shizuka flipped the picture upwards and found herself staring at a color photograph of three people with their arms around each other, beaming at the camera. One she recognized as a younger version of the man; another was a woman with long black hair and a black collar on her off-white dress; and the last was a teenage boy with pale blond hair and eyes that looked like a variation of gray.

"This?" Shizuka said quietly, not bothering to hold up the picture for the man to see; she had a feeling that he knew what she was talking about. "Was this your family?"

"It was."

"What happened to them?"

There was a long pause. "They died in the war."

"I'm sorry," Shizuka said sincerely, biting her lip; she remembered nothing of her own siblings and parents—if she'd even had any—before the war, and solitude was painful enough without memories. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for the man.

"I am too," the man said, very serious.

Shizuka dared to tilted the picture frame upward a bit, letting her see the photograph inside more clearly. For a second, as the ceiling light reflected off the blond-haired boy's eyes, she thought she recognized him, knew his name, had known him before—

Her breakfast tumbled to the carpeted ground as the picture clattered to the surface of the nightstand and she collapsed to her knees, clutching her head in her hands and breath coming in quick pants. Her eyes felt like they were being seared with agonizing slowness, her temples beginning the series of rapid thumps that she knew signified the start of one of her more vicious nights. The series of images and associated words was coming quicker and quicker, and, pressing her fingers to the sides of her head as if that would distract her form the other pain, she gasped out, "I recognized him! The boy—"

"What happened?" the man was saying, kneeling next to her. "Why did you—"

Shizuka caught a flash of white in his hand and snatched at it desperately, feeling relieved when her fingers closed around the bottle of painkillers he'd shown her earlier. "Thank you," she said, words tumbling and mixing together in her mouth. _Home_, she thought hazily. _Need to get home_. "Thank you, I'll leave now, see you later..."

And with that, she was slamming the door behind her—how had she even made it to the front room? She didn't remember the journey—and dashing down the concrete steps into the pouring rain outside, willing her legs to drag her back to her apartment before she drowned in one of the rapidly growing puddles on the sidewalk.

Once there, she took three of the pills and slept for a long, long time.

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_And the girl who's not really me is living in the apartment now, right? The man who owns the building has already explained all the rules to her._

_Don't talk about the time before the war, don't talk about the time after the war, don't leave the city, don't get involved in the black market, don't ask for things that don't rightfully belong to you, etc. All of those. You remember them, don't you?_

_Let's say the girl didn't understand at first._

_But because she didn't know otherwise, she followed them. And let's say... only because of that._

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_The park was bright with the springtime when they announced the start of the war._

_Shizuka sat with the skirt of her dress spread around her on the grass, twirling a leaf between two fingers and glancing up at her brother anxiously as he relayed the news to their group. Anzu was pale by her side, Miho sobbing and clinging to Honda's shirt, Bakura blinking placidly at the scene; Yugi just bit his lip and listened, eyes roving over the faces of his friends to see their reactions._

_Otogi had joined in the announcement, Kaiba was discussing with his own brother in lowered tones—he'd already heard about it long before they'd announced it and closed school early, Shizuka suspected—and the Ishtars were exchanging looks under the shade of the trees._

"_They're going to recruit us," Otogi said, serious for once. "All of us."_

_Miho made a muffled shrieking sound. Kaiba glanced up, as if to assess the situation, and took out his laptop and began typing. The sound was a comforting regularity beneath the brush of the wind and the chirp of the birds; Shizuka thought it seemed faster than usual._

"_Is there any way you can get out of it?" Anzu asked, worry furrowing her eyebrows._

"_Fake sickness, maybe," Katsuya said, shrugging hopelessly. "Unless Otogi and Kaiba combined can pull something to help us."_

"_Working on it," Kaiba snapped before they could turn their heads to him questioningly. "They won't recruit me, at least, not when I hold most of the financial power here, and that exempts Mokuba as well. I know Otogi is backing me, so that's one company covered. Pegasus will cooperate if I pull a few favors and Yugi duels him into humility for about ten rounds. If worst comes to worst, the three of us can promote you to high positions in our companies and say you have to be kept out of the danger zone for the sake of management."_

"_Huh," Honda said, a slow grin spreading over his face even as he patted Miho on the back. "Never knew you cared about us that much, Kaiba."_

_Kaiba snorted and resumed his typing, Mokuba watching over his shoulder. "I owe you some favors, and I don't like being in debt. Consider this my repayment."_

"_Isis?" Yugi said hesitantly, looking over to where the Ishtars were discussing by themselves. Honda and Otogi's banter immediately ceased; none of them knew the family very well, and all considered the three to be a sort of extension of Yugi-tachi, with the single connection coming through Yugi._

"_None of us will be backing out from service," Isis said, very calmly._

"_Even you?" Jounouchi said, surprised._

"_None of us," Isis repeated. "Thank you for the concern, Yugi, but we believe that we will be able to handle this war ourselves."_

"_Oh," Yugi said, looking chastised despite the second-eldest Ishtar's lack of a critical tone._

"_Are you sure?" Kaiba said, much to the shock of everyone else. His gaze was locked with Isis's, eyes narrowed. "Don't underestimate my influence among the government. By the time I'm done with them, they won't notice if your family is foreign or if I'm employing a colony of penguins to do my paperwork."_

"_Those don't have opposable thumbs," Mokuba added, eyes bright and unconcerned._

"_We're sure." It was Rishid who spoke this time; Shizuka had noticed over the past year that Malik rarely said anything, at least in public. She'd forgotten what his voice sounded like. "But again, we are grateful for the offer."_

"_Good luck," Yugi said, which prompted a flurry of hugs and well-wishes, as if the Ishtars were leaving that very moment and not weeks from then._

"_Why are you leaving?" Shizuka murmured as she wrapped her arms around Isis in parting._

_She'd expected an answer from the older woman. Not from Malik._

"_To seek our fate there," he said, eyes gleaming pale violet in the sunlight before Rishid grabbed him sharply by the arm and tugged him away._

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_It was the middle of the war, and the city was being bombed._

_Shizuka huddled in the darkness of her basement, her brother's arms around her in a protective shield as the radio crackled with a mixture of static and the news beside them._

"_...suspect for leaking information, Sergeant Major Malik Ishtar, Fourth Division..." There were a few more unintelligible sentences before the report became audible once more. "...for treachery and attempted mutiny, to be brought back preferably alive and questioned in headquarters..."_

"_Well," her brother mumbled, more to himself than anything else as the radio lapsed back into static, "always knew that kid was a treacherous little—"_

_The explosion threw them apart before he could finish his sentence._

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_With a startled jerk that left its aftershocks shuddering through her body, Shizuka recognized the once-teenager who sat on the bench before her, fingers laced nearly beneath his chin. "Malik," she said. "I remember you—I remember hearing about you on the radio. You deserted the army, made your own, tried to take over the government—"_

"_Not tried," Malik corrected, and his eyes were so very cold when they looked into hers. "Succeeded."_

"_You killed my brother!" she burst out, tears springing to her eyes. "Why? Why did you have to do it?"_

"_No reason," Malik said, shrugging, and Shizuka caught the laugh bubbling in his throat._

The war broke him_, she thought. _He's insane_._

"_I just wanted to be able to say I've done it." His eyes flashed in the light, nails cutting into her skin when he tilted her head back with one hand and examined her face. Blood ran down the side of her face, some of it mingling into her hair. "I think I'll leave you alive."_

.

"_What are you doing? Let me go, let me go—"_

"_War brings with it useful technologies. I'm making sure you forget me. Forget everything. You'll be grateful, later on."_

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23 Domino Plaza was a square of empty concrete, lined on the sides by benches and a few spindly trees with long, drooping leaves. The water pouring from the clouds pooled in its center in an ever-widening puddle, speckled with the breaking of thousands of raindrops.

The man—_Rishid_, Shizuka reminded herself; his name was Rishid—was sitting on a bench at the side.

"My head hurts," she told him as she sat next to him, paying no mind to the way the wood of the seat soaked through her jeans. "I'm going to forget all of this by tomorrow, aren't I?"

"I wouldn't know," Rishid said quietly. "My brother never deigned to tell me."

"He was the one who tried to get rid of my memories," Shizuka said. "He did it personally. I remember it."

"Malik didn't like people who knew him from the time before the war," Rishid said. "I was always something of a problem."

"He's insane," Shizuka said, voice questioning. "Isn't he?"

Rishid nodded once, and although his expression remained unmoved, Shizuka thought his eyes looked sad. "It wasn't as bad before the war. But all the violence, all the death—it got to him eventually... he had two personalities even then, and the war let the darker one take over."

"Why do you drink all of those cold things when it's so cold outside?" she said. Her fingers tapped against the wood of the bench in time with the throbbing in her head. Once. Twice. Two more times, sharp and behind the eyes. Shizuka winced and reached up to cradle them with one hand. "Do you like them that much?"

"I hate them," Rishid said with a humorless smile, "but my brother didn't. I said once that the day I let his dark personality gain control would be the day I began to enjoy them too, and I took that seriously."

"You shouldn't!" Shizuka said, surprised by her own vehemence. "Malik offered you an alternative to remembering everything, I know he did. You could've done it years ago, when the war ended. You could've been like me."

"The past is important," Rishid said.

"Not if it holds you back," Shizuka said. She missed the sensation of something in her hands that she usually had in their encounters, even when her fingers were currently worrying at her forehead. Her head gave another sickening throb, and she made a muffled sound of pain.

"There's nothing for it to hold you back from," Rishid pointed out. "What is there to aspire to now except remembering?"

"Being happy, maybe," Shizuka said.

"Were you happy before?"

"No," she admitted, pressing her palm into one side of her head and almost wishing for more of the pills Rishid had given her. "But that was because I was alone."

"What makes you think I'll be any less alone if I force myself to forget everything?" Rishid said. "I won't remember you afterwards. I won't remember a time when I wasn't alone."

"If you wake up and know you have a friend," Shizuka said, "then you won't think that."

Rain dripped from the ends of her hair, staining the sleeves of her shirt. Her jeans were already soaked through, and she shivered in the silence and wished she had thought to bring a coat. She shifted on the bench, scooting forward and tapping her fingers against the edge of the wood. "Okay?" she said.

There was another pause. "Okay."

"Syringe," Shizuka said, holding out her hand in his general direction; she still recalled enough to know that it was some sort of drug that Malik had given her to induce memory loss.

Rishid barely took a moment to think before something plastic and cold dropped into her palm. "Arm," she continued, hoping that she could still see clearly enough to avoid stabbing him in an artery and feeling vaguely smug that she knew him well enough to be able to tell that he would keep Malik's final offering with himself wherever he went.

Rishid wordlessly rolled up his sleeve, and the plunger went down. Shizuka couldn't quite stop the lightness in her chest that ensued after the contents of the syringe were gone, the elation bubbling up until it overruled even the pain in her head and burst out as a series of giggles.

"Why are you laughing?" Rishid said.

"I don't know," she said, standing up and testing her balance on two legs before pulling him along with her. "But I think I'm happy."

.

_This is where the story ends._

_Let's say the girl realized something. Let's say she remembered who she was, what she was, her family and her friends, if only for a few hours. __Let's say that she decided to forget them again so that she could live._

_This is a story about war, but the moral of it is about letting go. So therefore, you shouldn't ask me if what the girl did was right. Do I look like I know?_

_This story is about a girl who has my name but isn't me, not really. And since she's the one whose story ends, she's the one who gets to decide if it ends happily or not._

_Let's say it does._

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**End.**

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><p><strong>AN:** Mild editing done as of August 7th, 2011. I think I'm leaving this mostly intact, as a sort of honor thing after coming back from writing camp.

Anyway, **reviews**, especially ones with _constructive criticism_, are greatly appreciated. **Thank you** for reading!


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